'If You Protest, You Die': Drug Gangs Recruit Ecuador's Fishermen

A fisherman looks at a colleague painting a boat on the beach at the Santa Rosa fishing port in Salinas, Ecuador, in June 2024 (Credit: AFP)

With its idyllic, hotel-dotted coast, Ecuador's beach town of Salinas is the setting of a brutal war that most tourists never get to see.

Here, gangs forcefully enlist fishermen in drug trafficking -- a scourge that has transformed one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America into one of its most violent.